Readying an attack on Taiwan

Kenneth R. Timmerman explains how Clinton prepared China for battle

Editor’s note: In his new book, “Selling Out America,”
veteran
investigative reporter Kenneth R. Timmerman tells the complete — and
completely incredible — story of Bill Clinton’s relationship with
communist China, from the campaign-finance scandal to the transferring
of high-technology equipment and information to the PRC. Fired by Time
magazine for probing Clinton’s China ties, Timmerman explains the
step-by-step plan used to sell out U.S. military know-how. Following,
for the first time online, is the final chapter of “Selling Out
America,”
which can now be purchased at WorldNetDaily’s online store.

China is modernizing its military with help from the United States.
It is also importing advanced weaponry from Russia. In December 1999,
Presidents Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin signed a strategic cooperation
agreement in Beijing that called for an additional $20 billion of
Russian arms transfers to the PRC by 2004. The agreement also doubled
the number of Russian military technicians and nuclear experts working
in China, from an estimated 4,000 today to nearly 9,000. Russia’s Cold
War arsenal is being transferred lock stock and barrel to China.

“There is not a single Russian weapon, not a single Russian military
technology, that is off-limits to China,” Russian researcher Alexander
Nemets tells me.

Troubling as China’s growing new military capabilities and its
alliance with Russia may be, even more troubling is the growing
belligerency that has crept into public statements by top Chinese
civilian and military leaders.

Speaking at the PLA’s Military Command College in December 1999,
Defense Minister Chi Haotian painted a stark picture of communist
China’s future relations with the United States.

“Seen from the changes in the world situation and the United States’
hegemonic strategy for creating monopolarity, war is inevitable,” Gen.
Chi said. “We cannot avoid it. The issue is that the Chinese armed
forces must control the initiative of this war.” Accordingly, he
announced an increase in the PRC defense budget and noted that fully 52
percent of the budget through the year 2003 would be targeted on
retaking Taiwan.

On Feb. 3, 2000, the Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet
confirmed China’s growing belligerency in virtually unnoticed testimony
before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In the coming
months, Tenet said, tensions between Beijing and Taiwan could lead to a
regional military flare-up:

“Although Beijing today still lacks the air and sea-lift capability
to invade Taiwan, China has been increasing the size and sophistication
of its forces arrayed along the Strait, most notably by deploying
short-range ballistic missiles… Chinese leaders act as if they believe
at a minimum a show of force is required if they are to preserve any
hope of reunification … We see a high potential for yet another
military flare-up across the Taiwan Strait this year.”

On Feb. 28, Beijing stepped up its war of words, as a prelude to
Taiwan’s presidential elections in March. Once again, the warning was
directed at the United States.

“China is neither Iraq nor Yugoslavia, but a very special country,”
an editorial in the People’s Liberation Army official newspaper said. It
warned that U.S. intervention in a conflict between China and Taiwan
would result in “serious damage” to the United States, reminding readers
that the PRC “is a country that has certain abilities of launching
strategic counterattack and the capacity of launching a long-distance
strike” — a scarcely-veiled allusion to a nuclear attack.

Michael Pillsbury, one of the preeminent Sinologues in the U.S.
government, published a study of strategic writings by top PLA military
analysts (China Debates the Future Security Environment, National
Defense University Press, Washington, D.C., 2000) that reveals open
belligerency toward America, coupled to an astonishing lack of
understanding of American military power and America’s political system.

“According to some Chinese military authors,” Pillsbury writes, “the
United States already knows China can defeat it in 2020. Gen. Pan
Jungfeng states that the United States will not have formed a full
information warfare force until the middle of the 21st century. He
explains three ways that in future wars American computers can be very
vulnerable. ‘We can make the enemy’s command centers not work by
changing their data system. We can cause the enemy’s headquarters to
make incorrect judgments by sending disinformation. We can dominate the
enemy’s banking system and even its entire social order.'” (p. 69) If
these thinkers are representative — and Pillsbury leads us to believe
that they are — then the PLA appears to be poised on the edge of a
cliff, preparing for a potentially catastrophic war with the United
States.

Most U.S. analysts project China’s military power out 20 years, at
which point they believe the PLA could conceivably pose a significant
threat, not merely to U.S. forces in Asia, but globally. In their view,
a real threat emerges on the horizon during the decade 2020-2030. What
they fail to see, however, is the determination of China’s leaders
today, and their belief that they may have a strategic window of
opportunity opening the day after the U.S. presidential elections on
Nov. 7, and closing with the inauguration of the new president in
January 2001 — presuming that George W. Bush wins the election and
brings with him a team of adults to the White House.

China’s communist leaders are convinced that the transition period
between U.S. presidents offers them a unique window of opportunity
because they believe they have bought the president of the United
States, Bill Clinton.

When the Russian government launched its brutal second onslaught
against Chechnya in late 1999, Clinton issued a tepid condemnation,
calling the fighting an “internal matter” for the Russian government to
resolve. Similarly, when he traveled to China in April 1998, Clinton
issued his “Three Nos” in Shanghai: no to Taiwanese independence; no to
Taiwan’s membership in international organizations; and no to future
U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. The Chinese understood Clinton’s position —
rightly, I believe — to mean that his administration considers Taiwan
to be an integral part of the People’s Republic of China, and that the
U.S. will respond to Chinese aggression with the same lack of resolve as
it responded to Russia’s war in Chechnya. Clinton’s “Three Nos” were
nothing less than a green light to communist aggression.

Clearly, the PRC wants to seize control of Taiwan. Their first
preference would be to swallow Taiwan whole, without a battle, as they
did with Hong Kong in 1997. But failing that, the growing belligerency
of PRC leaders suggests they are increasingly convinced they must act
quickly to check democracy in Taiwan, before it crosses the Formosa
Strait and infects them.

In late May 2000, information from top-secret U.S. intelligence
reports surfaced in an Australian newspaper, triggering an internal
Pentagon investigation to discover the source of the leaks. According to
the Sidney Herald, senior Australian Defense Department and intelligence
agency officials had been briefed on the recent failure by the U.S. Navy
to track two Chinese submarines on patrol in the Taiwan Strait, “a
signal that China’s navy has the stealth to mount a blockade aimed at
forcing Taiwan to negotiate on reunification.” The Pentagon believes the
submarine incursion was a clear sign that “China in September or October
will attempt to blockade the port of Kaohsiung, the world’s third-ranked
container terminal, which handles the bulk of Taiwan’s foreign trade,”
the paper reported. Australia’s Defense Force chief, Adm. Chris Barrie,
who visited China for talks with defense chiefs in April, privately told
senior colleagues that he is now “pessimistic” about the outlook for
peace across the Taiwan Strait, the Herald added.

Because of Clinton’s policy of appeasement, and his reckless sell-off
of U.S. military technology, I believe America is facing the prospect of
war. We are about to enter one of the most dangerous periods in our
history, with a man at the helm who does not have America’s interests at
heart.

New capabilities

In January 1993, no serious observer saw communist China as a
serious military threat to the U.S. or to our allies in Asia. Less than
eight years later, we’re facing a very different situation. Here is just
a short list of the new military capabilities the PLA has brought on
line since Bill Clinton came to the White House:

a new generation of road-mobile, solid-fuel strategic
missiles, capable of reaching America’s heartland;

an encrypted military communications system virtually impervious
to electronic eavesdropping, coupled to a national command and control
system;

information-warfare teams ready to disrupt the American economy,
as well as our military electronics networks.

Why I’m against PNTR

China’s growing military might is one of the reasons I strongly
oppose granting communist China Permanent Normal Trading Relations,
which the U.S. House of Representatives approved on May 24 under intense
pressure from the Clinton-Gore administration.

I believe now is not the time to grant communist China concessions
that will further embolden it to misinterpret America’s resolve to
defend Taiwan and U.S. interests in Asia.

I believe now is not the time to help China’s communist elite to
further enrich themselves at the expense of U.S. taxpayers and U.S.
workers. I believe now is not the time to help modernize China’s
military factories with the benefit of U.S. technology and U.S. capital.

Major U.S. corporations such as Boeing, American Insurance Group,
Silicon Graphics and Hewlett Packard like to fantasize about a huge
Chinese market of 1.2 billion consumers. But the PRC actually imports
very little from America: less than Taiwan, Singapore or even Belgium.

Instead, they use America’s market as a dumping ground for cheap
consumer products, including low-end computers and computer hard drives.
This is why the United States ran a trade deficit in excess of $68
billion with the PRC in 1999. And the gap is growing. China consumes
domestically a scant 20 percent of what it imports from the United
States. The other 80 percent is re-exported to the U.S. in the form of
finished goods.

I have no problems in trading with the PRC, as long as we safeguard
our national security and our technology. But under Bill Clinton and Al
Gore, the safeguards that used to be in place have been dismantled,
while no new ones have been erected.

Bill Clinton’s criminal sell-off of our military technology to
Communist China has created new threats to America. My generation, and
my children, will be paying the price for his recklessness for years to
come.